translating him till the middle of the last century, when Sydenham, a member of Wadham College, Oxford, and not to be confounded with the great physician of the same name. translated nine of the Dialogues in very fair style and with very fair accuracy. These nine Dialogues were afterwards incorporated into a translation of the whole works of Plato, which the notorious Thomas Taylor brought out in the year 1804. Taylor's scholarship was quite inadequate to the task which he had undertaken. He appears to have translated more from the Latin version of Ficinus than from the original Greek, and he loaded his whole work with neo-Platonist glosses and notes, which served to show his incompetency to understand the thoughts of Plato. The incorrectness of his renderings and the general inadequacy of his representation of Plato, were pointed out in this Review (vol. xiv. 1809), and his five quarto volumes have long since receded into the limbo of unread books preserved in large libraries.

Only one other attempt has been made to translate the whole of Plato into English, and that attempt was not made as a substantive undertaking by itself, but as a part of the creditable enterprise of Messrs. Bohn to give all the Greek and Latin classics in a cheap form to English readers. Of the result, so far as Plato is concerned, only two things need be said: first, that no special attention was called to Plato by successive volumes containing translations of his Dialogues as part of a series of the entire classics; second, that a work of the kind cannot be properly done to order. To succeed as a translator of Plato, to breathe his spirit into the English language, and at all adequately to reproduce him, a man need have an inward calling and special aptitude to the task. To translate any part of Plato many qualities are required: such as refined scholarship, sympathetic philosophical imagination, an equal appreciation of poetry and of humour, and a poet's faculty of creating a new style in English fit to carry the Platonic turns of thought. But if it be a question of translating the whole of Plato, then the vastness of the undertaking must be borne in mind. This might well appal any but a stout heart. Many a charming episode and introduction might seem to invite the hand of the amateur translator. But when it comes to rendering with equal fidelity and conscientiousness all parts of such varied and voluminous writings, whether dry or interesting and often they are as severe as Euclid—then. indeed, it would seem to require a peculiar zeal, and an almost religious sense of the ultimate worth of Plato's thought, to support the scholar in his task. These considerations may

serve to explain to some extent the fact that there has hitherto been no adequate English version of Plato as a whole.

Translations of separate Dialogues we have occasionally had. Shelley's translations of Symposium' and Ion' were elegant in their way, and were doubtless widely read. Of late years several distinguished Greek scholars have been labouring in this field. Messrs. Davies and Vaughan have given us 'Republic' in English; Mr. Poste Philebus;' Mr. Cope 'Gorgias;' Mr. Wright Phædrus.' But the very separateness of these recent translations has caused them to appeal rather to the scholastic world, and to those who had a pre-existent interest in Plato, than to the general republic of readers. On the other hand, the late Mr. Grote's elaborate work on Plato and the other companions of Sokrates' had different aims and stood on a different footing from the volumes before us. Mr. Grote's book was a sequel and supplement' to his History of Greece.' It was an additional stride in his march through the Hellenic past. It was to be followed by an equally exhaustive account of the philosophy of Aristotle, and we look forward to an early posthumous publication of this work, though, alas! wanting the last touches of the master's hand. Mr. Grote's sympathies, it cannot be doubted, were rather with the modes of thought of Aristotle than with those of Plato. In his work on Plato he regards the Platonic writings from an external point of view, and judges them in reference to modern philosophy. In his excellent synopses of the contents of the Dialogues, he, of course, was not concerned to preserve the manner of Plato; he gives summaries of conversations, and not the conversations themselves. Professor Jowett's object is different; he aims at bringing us in contact with the very mind of Plato himself, evidently considering that to effect this would be an important contribution to the intellectual education of the age. In the execution of his task he found himself taking a different point of view on certain Platonic questions from that of Mr. Grote. He gracefully alludes to this in his Preface, which he concludes by saying: But I am not going to lay hands on my father 'Parmenides (Soph. 241 D.), who will, I hope, forgive me for differing from him on these points. I cannot close this Preface without expressing my deep respect for his noble ' and gentle character, and the great services which he has rendered to Greek literature.' A very short time had elapsed after these words were published, when Mr. Grote was borne to his resting-place in Westminster Abbey. And then, in accordance with the wish of Mrs. Grote, Professor Jowett, as

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the representative of Greek literature and scholarship, was invited to attend as one of the bearers of the pall. We cannot observe without admiration this relationship, so worthy of the courteous spirit of Plato, between two eminent men who certainly differed widely on a subject treated of by both, and who in a different age of literature would in all probability have appeared to each other only in the light of angry opponents.

From all that we have said it will be seen that the task of introducing Plato, in himself, and in his entirety, to the English mind, had yet to be undertaken. Probably no living man possesses qualifications for this task equal to those of Mr. Jowett. We pass over as subsidiary conditions the amount of Greek scholarship which is guaranteed by his posi tion as Regius Professor in the University of Oxford, and the peculiarly subtle and elegant style in English which in former writings he has exhibited. Starting from these points of vantage, we go on to those acquirements and habits of mind which peculiarly qualify him for entering into and interpreting the thought of Plato. Professor Jowett has been long remarkable for his attainments in the history of philosophy. He was the first, more than twenty-five years ago, to introduce the study of this subject into Oxford. At that time philosophy, or, as it used to be called, science,' was a poor curriculum in Oxford. It was restricted almost entirely to the readingcareful but narrow, without comparison of other systems, and without comprehension of the point of view-of Aristotle's Rhetoric, Logic, and Ethics, and of Butler's Sermons and Analogy.' Professor Jowett has been the chief cause of the great change in this respect which has been introduced into Oxford. Drawing on his own rich stores of reading and thought, which had far transcended the Oxford horizon of those days, he gave in Balliol College lectures on the history of philosophy, which fascinated the minds of those privileged to hear them. He influenced first his own college, and afterwards through his pupils, who rapidly obtained fellowships, examinerships, and other positions of importance, he influenced the University at large, to appreciate and require a wider range of philosophical study. Especially, he introduced Plato's greatest work, Republic,' and the Novum Organum' of Bacon, with the outlines of the history of thought in ancient and modern times, as necessary additions to the old modicum of Aristotle, for an Oxford first-class.' Anyone who can compare the cultivation now attainable at Oxford with that of thirty years ago, will appreciate the results of the change which Mr. Jowett was the first to inaugurate. In the meanwhile,

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after himself sounding the depths of all the great philosophies of the world, he has always returned to Plato as to a firstlove. And the book in which he now unfolds Plato to the many, is the result not only of the hours directly spent on it during many years, but it has the interest attaching to the fruit slowly ripened during a life; its motto might have

been:

"Vagliami il lungo studio e il grande amore.'

But yet Professor Jowett's sympathy with Plato does not render him a Platonist, in the sense either of resting in the conclusions of Plato, or of drawing mystical deductions from them, as neo-Platonists of all ages have been fond of doing; it merely enables him to understand and realise Plato, while his deep knowledge of the subsequent thought of mankind erables him to see the limitations of Plato's thought. He gives us no general dissertation on the Platonic philosophy, no systematical arrangement of it. But he puts each several dialogue in itself before us, with an introduction drawing out its meaning into the most lucid and charming light, and containing the most interesting and weighty remarks on subjects that naturally suggest themselves. The result, we may say generally, has been that no ancient philosopher has ever been brought to the comprehension of modern times so fully, so clearly, and with such perfect genuineness as Plato has now been brought to the comprehension of the English reader by Professor Jowett.

The book is inscribed by Mr. Jowett To my former Pupils in Balliol College and in the University of Oxford, 'who during thirty years have been the best of friends to me, in grateful recognition of their never-failing attachment.' This dedication is not only interesting in itself, but it serves to remind us of a peculiar and personal qualification for becoming the expositor of Plato, which the present Master of Balliol alone could claim. Not only has Mr. Jowett a general sympathy for Plato's method of treating the questions of philosophy, but it is also well known that he is a kindred spirit with the chief character in the Platonic Dialogues. Probably no one in modern times has given in real life, whether consciously or unconsciously, so close a reproduction, mutatis mutandis, of the Platonic Socrates, in his character of an educator of youth. Nowhere but at a University could such a phenomenon now-a-days have presented itself—the phenomenon of a man, with powers of mind far above those generally thought necessary for a teacher, devoting himself to the development and correction of the thought and character of

young men, generation after generation, not so much by the teachings of the lecture-room as by friendly intercourse, walks, and conversations, genuine interest in their concerns, sympathetic advice, toleration of their crudities, keen-edged refutation of their absurdities, veiled dialectic and badinage concealing earnestness-all employed with the most singleminded and noble purpose. Such a phenomenon the University of Oxford has 'during thirty years' witnessed; and it is in reference to this that we say that there is a peculiar interest in the fact of Professor Jowett inscribing his exposition of the Platonic Socrates to his former pupils.'

We have now to examine the way in which his task as a translator has been executed. Many philosophers are really untranslateable into literary English. This seems to be the case with Kant and Hegel; at all events in their strictly philosophical writings. And the same might be said of Aristotle, whose language is not the language of common life or of literature, but stands by itself-a stiff concrete of philosophical terms, each with its own scientific association. Thus Aristotle can never be turned into literary or easily readable English, without too great an alteration of his manner, and without sacrificing in the process much that is essentially Aristotelian. But with Plato the case is different. Plato's philosophical writings are simply the greatest masterpieces of prose that the world has seen. The language is never for a moment that of a cut and dry technology. In the first place, the phraseology of logic and metaphysics had not in Plato's time been settled down into a repertory of fixed terms. And, in the second place, as Plato almost always exhibits philosophy in the process of being worked out in conjunction with unphilosophical personages, so the point of departure in the Dialogues is the ordinary thought of refined and cultivated, but not scholastic, circles. The atmosphere is that of polite Athenian society, and the language is correspondingly natural and unpedantic. Out of this ordinary level, in which the familiarity and domestic meanness of the illustrations used are often striking, Plato rises ever and anon to an elevation of thought and diction which has called forth the admiration of subsequent ages. Shelley, having such passages in his mind, says: Plato exhibits the rare union of close and subtle logic with the Pythian inspiration of poetry, melted by the splendour and harmony of his periods into one irresistible 'stream of musical impressions which hurry the persuasions onward, as in a breathless career. His language is that of an immortal spirit, rather, than a man. Lord Bacon is,

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